


meet me in the woods

by Ejunkiet



Series: corvidae and whiskey [1]
Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: BAMF Karen Page, Coffee and Gunfights, F/M, Fancy hotel bars with wine and whiskey, Fluff and Angst, Home Invasion, Post-Season/Series 02, Protective Frank Castle, Road Trips, or the one where Frank wrecks her apartment and learns to apologise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-29
Updated: 2016-04-30
Packaged: 2018-06-05 08:06:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6696724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ejunkiet/pseuds/Ejunkiet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Frank doesn’t wait for them to break the lock – he kicks the door open and slams into the first body he makes contact with behind it, lashing out in a blur of kicks and punches.</em>
</p><p>  <em>The intruder falls back, face bloody, and then Frank’s gone, and Karen is left alone, crouched beneath her bed like a five year old hiding from the monsters in her closet, except that she’s no longer a child, and now she has a gun.</em></p><p>--</p><p>Frank turns up on her doorstep on a Tuesday night and stays until Friday.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. part one

**Author's Note:**

> Prompted by devilbunnyking: kastle + meet me in the woods, by Lord Huron. This will be posted in two parts. If you haven't listened to this song yet, you should.
> 
> _"I have seen what the darkness does- say goodbye to who I was."_

Frank turns up on her doorstep on a Tuesday night and stays until Friday.

It’s been weeks since Hell’s Kitchen has felt the presence of the Punisher, presumed dead or otherwise. The recent vigilante activity within the city had given rise to a slew of copycats and citizen's arrests, and the local police forces have been stretched to breaking point trying to keep up. The numbers of civilian casualties had mounted, and the city had reacted: tripling the numbers of plain clothes officers on the streets in an attempt to keep the peace.

Karen had assumed that Frank was laying low during the increased police presence, taking the time to lay out plans of attack that would keep his activities far away from the eyes of the police force, a creature of rumor once more.

The fact that he’s here, dressed down in ‘civilian attire’ or at least his approximation of it - loose fitting sweats and non-descript black shirt that afforded easy maneuverability while attracting minimal attention – suggests that this is not the case.

She’s not surprised; as long as people still committed crimes within this city, the Punisher’s work would never be done.

–

After that night on the rooftop, Karen hadn’t been sure if she’d ever see him again, or what she’d do if she did – but when he’d turned up beaten and bloody on her doorstep less than a month later, she hadn’t turned him away.

It’s not as if she had forgotten about him during those few weeks. Karen had been carrying out her own research into what she’d overheard in the forest, pulling up whatever she could find on Frank’s unit in the military and their activities in Afghanistan. It was long, frustrating work, filled with dead ends and plenty of times where she was stonewalled, but she was able to confirm one thing for sure: there was never any mention of Schoonover or Castle in Kandahar.

There’s more to the story of Frank Castle and Schoonover, more to his unit’s activities in Afghanistan that had resulted in the creation of the Punisher, and Karen has every intention of getting to the bottom of it. She was nothing if not persistent; her editor at the Bulletin could attest to that.

She makes plans to interrogate him on the matter the next time she sees him, patience and tact be damned, but she never gets the opportunity: as on Frank’s next visit, he proposes their arrangement.

It was a simple exchange: Frank would answer her questions and provide an insight into the current goings on of the criminal community and in return, Karen would provide him with research and a place to crash when things got bad.

Karen had accepted with every intention of learning more about his past and the secrets that had been revealed that night in the woods, and Frank had been a regular visitor ever since.

–

Karen hadn’t expected to see Frank tonight.

It was too soon after his last visit, and although it’s not like Frank kept a regular schedule when he visited her, he did tend to stick to routine; which meant he’d normally give her a few weeks of breathing space before he turned up on her doorstep again. When she asks him what he needs and he doesn’t give her anything more than ‘a place to crash for a couple days’, her sense of unease grows, prickling at the back of her skull.

In the end, though, Karen decides that whatever it is Frank is keeping from her, it doesn’t matter; it’s not as if they share everything. As long as he remains a good house guest, staying out of her way and cleaning the place up before he leaves, she doesn’t care.

Over the next few days, they fall into a routine of sorts: Frank providing the coffee in the morning, Karen a warm place to sleep and a relatively comfortable couch, although it’s short, way too short for a man of his stature. She wouldn’t wish that sort of back ache on anyone, but it’s all she has to offer, and for all the nights he’s spent there, he’s never mentioned any complaints.

It’s domestic and sweet, and way too good to last.

On the morning of the final day, she wakes from an uneasy, uncomfortable sleep to the touch of Frank’s hand on her shoulder. Her first thought is that she’s woken him – her nightmares have become extremely vivid recently – but that thought stops short when she sees his expression, the grim set of his mouth, and she barely comprehends what he is saying when he tells her that she needs to go, and go  _now._

“What _-_ ”

She’s interrupted by a crash from the direction of her kitchen, the sound of breaking glass - her window - and Frank’s eyes darken as he glances towards the sound, the muscle ticking above his jaw.

“Shit.” He turns back to Karen with a muttered curse, using his hand on her shoulder to push her toward the far edge of the bed as he reaches into her bedside table for her gun. He unclips the magazine and checks the rounds before he slides the gun back together and places it in her hand.

“Get under the bed.”

She does as he requests, no questions asked, as more noises join the ones she can still hear from her kitchen and her front door, busted off the hinges from the sound of it, falls to the floor with a clattering crash.

Chest to the floor, throat tight, she crawls into the narrow space beneath her bed frame, her grip slick around the gun as she watches Frank’s boots move to the wall beside the door. His posture is crouched and tense, waiting, but her intruders aren’t bothered about masking their presence – she can hear the sounds of things breaking, heavy boots squealing against her hard wood floors. They’re tearing apart her cramped little apartment, making their way towards her door, and she holds her breath, forcing herself to calm her breathing.

Frank glances back at her hiding place, mouths the words ‘wait here’ as the footsteps reach the end of the hallway, and her heart lurches into her throat as the door knob rattles, latched shut.

Frank doesn’t wait for them to break the lock – he kicks the door open and slams into the first body he makes contact with behind it, lashing out in a blur of kicks and punches.

The intruder falls back, face bloody, and then Frank’s gone, and Karen is left alone, crouched beneath her bed like a five year old hiding from the monsters in her closet, except that she’s no longer a child, and now she has a gun.

–

The first few minutes drag on for what feels like hours.

She can hear the sounds of breaking furniture and gunfire as her apartment erupts into violence, and with every discharged bullet she fears – fears for _Frank_ , although she knows he was more than capable of holding his own in a fight.

It’s not long until the fight comes to her, and the door to the bedroom bursts open, closely followed by the heavy tread of military-issue combat boots.

The calm and measured steps are at odds with the sounds coming from the rest of her apartment, and she clutches her gun closer to her chest, carefully pulling back the safety as she holds her breath. She prays that it won’t come to this, that she won’t need to pull the trigger.

The feet stop in front of her closet, and she can hear the click of metal from the cocking of a gun, before the loud retort of gunfire rings out across her apartment.

Shit.

She’s on her feet in less than a second, pulling the trigger once, twice, into the leather-clad back of the gang member who’d just unloaded his weapon into her wardrobe.

His body shudders as the shotgun drops to the floor, his hands rising to press against the holes in his chest, crimson staining his fingers as he lets out a long, shuddering breath.

She watches him fall to the ground as if in slow motion, leaving bloody handprints as he crumples into her closet. Her hands tremble as she lets the weapon slip from her grip and fall onto her bed.

There’s a gargled yell from the other room and a sharp snap, the sharp retort of gunfire echoing throughout her apartment before Frank is running into the room, the black kevlar front of his torso and neck stained with blood. 

The gun is back in her grip before she’d realised she’d even reached for it, and he raises his hands, his eyes on her, searching.

“He didn’t get you?”

She shakes her head, no, and he lets out a breath, a line of tension dropping from his shoulders even as he takes a step further into the room, eyes scanning the room before they settle on the body on the floor.

Karen can’t tear her eyes away from the body. She feels sick to her stomach, and has to turn to the side to retch, dry heaving onto the floor.

Frank takes the last step to close the distance between them, his hand a warm, steadying pressure against her back even as he removes the gun from her grip and resets the safety, placing it back into her bedside table.

He brings her into the kitchen, the only room that had emerged relatively unscathed from the violence, and sits her at the table as he moves around the small space, thick boots crunching over the shards of broken glass that litter the floor. It’s not long before he’s back, pressing a steaming mug of coffee into her hands even as he ducks down to peer at her face, brushing her hair back as he gently cups her chin, checking her over for injuries.

“Drink,” he orders, and she does, barely tasting the bitter-sweet combination of black coffee and sugar.

Once he’s sure she’s taking it down, he moves away again, and she hears the sound of water running before he’s back with a damp flannel in hand; wiping streaks of crimson from her face that she hadn’t even realised had gotten onto her skin.

–

Karen finds the words to speak somewhere in the middle of her second cup of coffee.

“What happened tonight?”

Frank glances up from where he’d been standing by the window, keeping an eye on the street as he surveyed the extent of the damage that had been wreaked upon her apartment. He’s had a chance to clean himself up; wiping down his front and pulling on one of the spare shirts Karen had taken to keeping around, just in case.

“Someone placed a hit on you.” He glances at her sidelong, the corner of his mouth twisting in a half-smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Your articles. They’re good. You’ve ruffled some feathers.”

She thinks back – she hasn’t written anything incriminating, not in a long while. Nothing to warrant a hit like this, unless… unless it was preemptive. “They see me as a threat?" 

He shrugs. "It was a matter of time.”

She bites her lip to hold back a sharp retort, keeping her eyes low as she fights back the heat in her eyes, blinking hard. She was bigger than this. Better than this.

“Hey.” Frank’s moved closer, she can see the mud on the toes of his boots, the scuff marks they’ve made on the hardwood floors of her ruined apartment. She doesn’t know why she hasn’t just moved away, just gotten in her car and hit the highway, driving until the city was far, far behind her.

“Karen,” he tries, and she glances up to meet his gaze, the heat burning, morphing until it was simmering just beneath her skin. It doesn’t take long for her to recognise the emotion as anger.

“And you knew.” He doesn’t respond, doesn’t meet her stare, and she takes a breath, holds it, counts to five. “You knew, and you didn’t tell me. What the _fuck_ , Frank.”

“Would it have changed anything if I told you?”

“This is my _home_. You goddamn son of a bitch.”

She’s reached her limit of bullshit for the day, and she buries her face in her hands, fingers tangling within her hair. The distant wail of sirens are growing louder outside her window – or rather, what was _left_ of her window, and this isn’t over, not by a long shot, but she doesn’t need to see Frank’s glance at the window, or hear the screech of tires against pavement to know that Frank needs to leave.

“Go. I’ll deal with this.” She can hear him hesitate, feel the weight of his eyes on her and she shakes her head, keeping her eyes on the shitty laminate covering of her kitchen table. “Just go, Frank.”

He doesn’t argue the point any further, just gathers up his assorted weaponry and slips out the fire escape, pulling his cap down low on his face as he makes his way towards the unmarked van he’d parked in an alleyway nearby.

The thunder of footsteps on the landing outside her apartment mark the entry of the local police force. There’s gunshot residue on her hands, bodies on her floor, and her apartment is a wreck; it’s going to be a long night.

“Fuck.”


	2. part two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Smiling suits him; softens the harsh lines of his face, and she’s reminded of Frank, the husband, the father; the man he’d been before all of this. The reminders don’t come as often anymore._

It takes several days for the inquiries by the police to run their course, days spent sitting in the cramped, uncomfortable metal chairs they provided at the station or sleeping on the sofa bed at Foggy’s apartment. Hers is still a crime scene and seeing that it has been cordoned off until further notice – courtesy of her strained relationship with the current district attorney – Karen had been forced to look into alternatives, although to say she was finding it difficult would be an understatement.

None of the rental companies she had contacted would take her calls.

She can’t say she blames them. This is her second apartment in twice as many months, and at this point, she'd be lucky to find another landlord who'd be willing to let her step foot on their property. (She wouldn’t be surprised to find her name posted on a blacklist of tenants that was circulated around the rental companies in her neighborhood; she did not expect her security deposit back.)

If she’d had anything over the last few days though, it was more than enough time to think, and Karen has come to the realisation that she could never truly leave the Kitchen. It wasn’t just that her job was here, or the few friends she’d made over the years – this city was a part of her now, and she needed to be here, a finger on the pulse, digging through its secrets and uncovering the truth buried beneath all of the shit.

Which meant she had to make this work.

The only remaining option left to her was to stay and attempt to patch up her apartment as best as she could. She could make it livable, at least; she had enough money in her savings to fix most of the damage and install a security system, even if she couldn’t afford to replace all the furniture. With her luck, that was probably for the best; with the rate she was burning through apartments, who’s to say she wouldn’t have to replace it all again in a month or two, anyway?

\--

It's several days later that the charges against her are brought to light, and it’s Foggy’s prompt arrival after she was brought in for questioning that keeps her out of jail, if only just. There are questions about the case that she can’t answer, not fully – and when she provides only vague descriptions of the missing shooter from her apartment (“I couldn’t see much - their clothing was bulky, face covered - I never heard their voice”), they correctly assume that she is protecting someone.

The police have apparently had their suspicions about her and her involvement with the vigilantes since she’d written that article about Frank Castle for the Bulletin nearly a year ago, and after speaking with the district attorney, Foggy gives it to her straight: that they’re hoping to make an example out of her.

“But they’ll have to get through me, first,” he adds with a grin, stepping forward to place his hands on her shoulders, squeezing gently. “They’ve got no case. You won’t see the inside of a courtroom, I can promise you that.”

He’s true to his word: Nelson and his new firm work their magic, and by the end of the week, her case has been dropped. Following the dismissal of any charges that may have been raised against her, the investigation into the attempted hit on her life is officially closed, written off as a mob-hit gone wrong.

Once the final piece of paperwork has been filed, Karen takes an extended leave of absence from the Bulletin, buys a suitcase and packs as much as she can carry; she doesn't know how long she's going to be gone. She has every intention of leaving the city that very night, but by the time she’s finished packing and found a reasonably priced car rental service, the exhaustion of the past few weeks has caught up to her, and she’s in no state to drive. With few options remaining to her, she picks out the shards of glass and wood from her ruined sofa and falls into a deep and unpleasant sleep.

She feels barely rested when she wakes up around noon the next day, but her hands are steadier and her reflexes good, and that’s enough. Leaving a note on her wrecked door for her landlord, she rents a car and hits the I-95 North and just drives; drives as far away from the city as she can get on a full tank of gas and then some.

Karen finds herself on familiar territory after about six hours of driving; navigating beautiful rolling hills and roads overshadowed by maple trees until she reaches the little town of Fagan Corners. It’s been years since she’s been back, and even though her family has long since moved away from Vermont, she still makes a stop at the old family home where she grew up, the cemetery where her brother was buried.

The flowers at his grave are old and withered and she replaces them with a handful she’d bought at the gas station on the way here. It’s not much, but it’ll do, and her eyes burn as she clears away the debris from the stone marker bearing his name.

By the time she leaves, she’s feeling better – whole. It’d been too long since she had made the trip back here; years, even before she moved to New York. She shouldn’t have waited this long to come back.

She books herself into a room at a hotel nearby and falls into a deep sleep for the first time in over twenty four hours, too exhausted to dream.

\--

It takes Karen two weeks to make the return trip to Hell’s Kitchen. The journey itself takes a few days, but she takes advantage of the opportunity to visit the few remaining relatives she has in the area and then takes the toll-free roads on the way back. It may be putting off the inevitable, but she relishes the few extra hours she gets to spend in the country, breathing in the familiar taste of fresh Vermont air.

When she gets back into the city, she doesn’t feel like returning to the disaster that is her apartment. It doesn’t take long for her to find a hotel on the outskirts of the city and she goes ahead and books a room for the night, with plans to spend the evening down at the bar with a nice bottle of red. She even dresses for the occasion, tying up her hair and putting on the simple, sleeveless black dress that had somehow made its way into her suitcase when she’d packed to leave the city.

Frank turns up less than an hour after she orders her first drink. He looks good, better than he has any right to – the place she’d checked into was nicer than her usual fare and just within her price range for the night, and he’s dressed in clothes appropriate for the venue: a neatly pressed white dress shirt and dark slacks. It isn’t surprising, really; Frank’s usual attire of dark cargo pants and vest wouldn’t cut it here, and god knows he had enough money to purchase a respectable change of clothes.

She won’t lie to herself and say that she hadn’t hoped that the dress code would keep him out, though.

She’s well into her second glass at this point, a dark Merlot with sweeter undertones of cherry, and she’s relaxed enough that she doesn’t just get up and leave when Frank takes the seat adjacent to her at the bar.

“How did you find me?”

Frank doesn’t respond right away, instead flagging down the bartender to place his order. “Macallan: neat. And a bottle of what the lady’s drinking. Thanks.”

Karen waits until he’s gotten his drink and her own has been topped up before turning to face him, raising an expectant brow. “Well?”

He gives her an assessing stare, taking in the slight flush on her cheeks, the tight grip she has on the stem of her wine glass, before he finally admits, “your name came up on the scanner.”

“The police are keeping tabs on me?”

His lips twist into an approximation of a smirk, and he glances down, rubbing the palm of his hand over the lower half of his face. This is the first time Karen thinks she’s seen him clean-shaven since the trial. “Disaster does have a tendency to follow you around.”

“Great. I take it you being here isn’t going to be an issue?”

He shakes his head, letting out a snort. “Nah. I’m dead, remember?”

An awkward silence falls between them as Frank shifts his position on the uncomfortably high stool, glancing at her askance as she takes another sip of her drink. She keeps her eyes averted, purposefully ignoring his stare, determined not to make this easy for him.

“I think I owe you an apology.”

She lets out a snort. “No shit.”

“Look.” He releases a breath in a short, sharp gust, running his fingers through his closely cropped hair. “I just wanted you to know that you aren’t obligated to keep our arrangement.”

She lowers her glass, eyeing him steadily over the polished surface of the bar. “I know.”

He can’t and won’t make the promise to her that she will be safe associating with him, she knows that. She’s always known the risk she’s taking by working with him, the danger she is inviting by allowing him into her apartment. She’s had a lot of time to think this over during the last few weeks though, and she’s knows that even if she broke off her arrangement with him, their situation would not change.

She’d once said that she valued Frank’s honesty, but that wasn’t it, not really. What she’d valued was that he didn’t lie about himself, but that’s not to say he didn’t lie to _her_ , hiding the truth from her when it suited him. He’d demonstrated this on several occasions – first in the diner, and then in her apartment a few weeks ago - and that wasn’t going to work anymore.

“Let’s be honest here, Frank; this isn’t about the arrangement. Even if we stopped working together, we’d still find ourselves here. It’s who we are, and this is a small city, there’s no avoiding that.” She pauses, taking a short, steadying breath as she mulls over her words, what she’s trying to say. “We need to be able to work together.”

Frank doesn’t speak for a long moment, his dark eyes considering as he takes in her expression, what she isn't saying. She can tell he’s thought about it too, probably considered breaking their arrangement half of dozen times before arriving at the same conclusion she always did: that it wouldn’t change a thing. They’d still see each other at every other crime scene, and they’d still wind up here.

She steels herself, tilting her body more towards his, noting as she does that his eyes track the movement, follow the slide of her dress as it inches up her thigh. She pauses, smoothing down the fabric before she continues. “No more lies, Frank.”

He takes another sip of his drink, pushing himself back from the counter, holding her gaze until he finally says, “I don’t remember lying to you.”

"What a load of _horseshit_." She folds her hands in her lap, fingers gripping each other tightly as she narrows her eyes at him in a glare. If she had to spell it out for him, she would. “Lying by omission is _still lying_ , Frank. Even if you believe it’s in my best interest. I can handle it. I’m not as fragile as you seem to think I am.”

His brow furrows, and he relinquishes his grip on the glass, shifting forward in his seat until there’s a scant few inches between them, his hand flexing against the bar top. “I never thought you were fragile, Karen.”

“Then don’t treat me as if I am. You don’t need to protect me: I can take care of myself.”

He holds her gaze for another long minute, something complicated and unreadable in his expression before he lets out a breath and says, “I can try.”

“That’s all I’m asking.”

They’re interrupted by the return of the bartender, a fresh bottle of Merlot in one hand and a spare glass in the other. He offers Frank the opportunity to taste it which he waves away, taking the bottle from him to refill Karen’s wine glass. It’s not long before they’re alone again, and Karen accepts her refilled wine glass with a murmur of thanks, shooting Frank a puzzled look when he lets out a low laugh, bringing a hand up to rub at his face.

“What is it?”

“Nothing. Remind me not to piss you off too often.”

She laughs as well, despite herself, and Frank crack’s a smile; and just like that, the tension between them breaks. Smiling suits him; softens the harsh lines of his face, and she’s reminded of Frank, the husband, the father; the man he’d been before all of this. The reminders don’t come as often anymore, not since he’d settled fully into his role as the Punisher, accepting the mantle with a grim determination that should scare her, but doesn’t.

"You clean up good, Frank.”

He laughs. “Thanks, I guess. You’re looking pretty good yourself.”

“Just pretty good?” She shifts in her seat to face him more fully, letting her hair fall over one shoulder in a soft wave as she raises her brows at him in challenge, and he huffs out another quiet laugh, glancing back down at his empty glass.

“Alright, maybe a little bit more than pretty good.”

She smiles, taking another sip from her glass as she glances around the lounge, practically empty at this early hour. That wouldn’t remain the case for long though, and the idea crosses her mind that she should invite him up, so that they could continue their conversation in relative privacy.

She stops that thought right there in its tracks, before it has the chance to develop any further. Invite him up? When had they crossed that line, moving from acquaintances and occasional allies to something more akin to friends?

No, they were more than that – somehow, at some point over the last few months, they’d grown close, closer than she’d realised. Despite everything that had happened between them the last few weeks, she trusted him: trusted him to have her back, regardless.

It was a strange feeling, being able to place her faith in someone like this.

She glances back over to where Frank is ordering another glass of Macallan, taking in the picture he makes, clean and well-groomed. He presents a handsome figure in that suit, and really, it was a shame that he rarely had the opportunity to dress like this anymore, although she couldn’t really see where fine-dining would fit into the weekly schedule of the Punisher.

And later she'd blame it on the location, or the alcohol (or some mixture of the two), but she finds herself thinking that maybe… maybe, just once, she’d like to have the opportunity to try that with him. Candlelight and table cloths, petit hors d'oeuvres and a shared bottle of wine.

She glances away, ignoring the heat that flares up her neck as she takes another long sip from her newly refilled wine glass. While the appreciation itself wasn’t new – she’d helped stitch him up enough times to gain a healthy respect for the effort he put into maintaining his physique - the attraction definitely was, and it was something she’d have to consider carefully over the next few weeks or months before she’d see him again.

She can feel Frank’s eyes on her, and she wonders just how much he can read from her expression, if he has any idea as to the nature of the thoughts going through her mind.

Another comfortable silence falls between them as Frank finishes his drink, the glass clinking against the counter as he pushes it across the bar instead of ordering another.

“Leaving so soon?”

He cracks another smile at that. “Yeah. Got some business to deal with.”  

He doesn’t offer any further details and she doesn’t ask for them, watching as he steps down from the stool and adjusts the cuffs of his shirt, just like any other business man on a work trip out of town.  She lets out a snort when he takes out a money clip and throws down a couple bills, enough to cover the whiskey, wine and more besides, and he smirks, catching her eye.

“You know, you’re probably going to find yourself with some unwanted company if you stick around here much longer.”

“I was planning on leaving before that happened, actually.”

He laughs and turns to leave, and she reaches out, catching his arm. “Wait. Thank you, Frank. I don’t think I’ve said that, yet.” She hadn’t, she knows that; she hadn’t had the opportunity during the chaos of the firefight and the arrival of the police shortly after, and it’s something that had weighed on her during those intervening weeks.

Frank’s smile returns, the softer, gentler one that crinkles the edges of his eyes, and he nods. “I’ll be seeing you, Ms. Page.”

\--

When she gets back to her apartment building a few days later, her landlord is there to greet her, and it’s then that she learns that workmen have already set to work on her apartment, replacing the front door and repairing the worst of the damage. He thanks her for hiring them out of pocket as he hands her a ring of keys and she nods mutely as she accepts them, half-listening to his explanation of which ones go to which deadbolt before he leaves, and she makes her way up the narrow flight of stairs to her floor.

She stops when she gets to her apartment number, biting her lip as she takes in her newly installed front door. It’s solid, carved from thick hard wood and painted over with red varnish, and looks much more secure than the one she had before, in such a way that tells her it was expensive – and if she had any doubt remaining about who exactly was responsible for this, it’s gone when she sees the sticker for the newly installed security system. There’s only one person she knows who could afford to cover the renovations for her apartment; the same person who’d have the audacity not to mention it to her before she came back.

“Goddamn it, Frank.”

Inside is a similar story: the worst of the mess has already been tidied up and her windows have been replaced with double glazing. Her things have been packed neatly into boxes, alongside several stacks of Ikea flat-pack furniture awaiting installation.

On one of the newly repaired kitchen counters is a note, penned in a familiar neat script that she’d recognise anywhere, even if the note itself is unsigned.

_It was the least I could do._

She lets out a long breath, dragging her fingers through her hair as she takes in the scope of the changes that have been made to her apartment. Most of the appliances she’d brought with her from her previous rental have been replaced with newer, more energy efficient models – and she appreciates the gesture, she really does, even if she wants to punch him, hard, for making it.

She picks up the note to throw it away, but pauses when she sees handwriting on the other side. Turning it over reveals an unlabelled phone number, which she adds to her phone with the label ‘F’ before composing a quick message:

_Thank you, again._

Less than a minute later, her phone vibrates, and the reply from ‘F’ flashes up on her screen.

_Stay safe._

 

\--

 

 

(It takes Karen a little under a month to get most of the flat-pack furniture assembled. Whoever wrote the instructions were either disturbed or sadistic, as she could barely make head or tail of them, even when she turned them upside down. When Frank next appears on her doorstep, clean-shaven and relatively unbruised for once – a social call, then - she has everything built except for the wardrobe.

After a solid minute or two of ribbing at her expense, Frank graciously agrees to lend her a hand with the final project. It takes them all night to construct the damn thing, just to discover that one of the crucial components – a load bearing screw – is missing.

Karen swears then and there that she will _never_ buy anything from Ikea ever again, and Frank agrees, his expression all-serious until one of them cracks, and then they’re both laughing, keeled over on the floor of her cramped living room.

It’s a lot easier to take the wardrobe apart than it was to construct it and Karen moves the dismantled pieces to the curb in the morning, some stranger’s problem now, instead of hers.)

**Author's Note:**

> find me at my tumblr: ejunkiet !


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